Maybe the best gadget I've ever bought?

 

Fairly insidiously, Amazon has taken over my house.  I now have various iterations of FireTVs connected to each TV, and almost every room has an echo device.

I'm not complaining really, these are great pieces of technology, and voice control is a lot more useful that I would have envisaged a few years ago. 

And the FireTV is excellent - easy to use and supports everything I use on a regular basis; Netflix, Kodi, Spotify, Emby Amazon Video and more. However, there's one thing that' been bugging me -  it's lack of true bit-streaming of extended sound formats. I use Kodi quite a bit for my media library, and there are many titles in there with fancy surround formats that just don't make it out to my AV system unscathed.

This is only an issue in my Home Cinema which has a full 7.1.4 system that can make best use of such soundtracks (everywhere else is plain old stereo).

I've been reading about the nVidia Shield for a while and finally bought one to see if it could replace the FireTV in this room. Here's how I got on with it...

First impressions? It's tiny! For some reason, I was thinking about a device the size of, say, a PS3 slim. But this is much smaller than that. I went for the TV Pro version and can only imagine that the non-pro cylinder form factor is even smaller again.

Next impression? I really like the remote. It's an unusual three sided affair that's surprisingly comfortable to hold, lights up when picked up and has really good illumination. A lot better than some of the illuminated remotes I'm used to (Marantz, I'm looking at you here!)

In any case, I'm unlikely to use the remote much as setting the shield up with my Harmony hub was straightforward enough, and works perfectly.

Another benefit is that control is by bluetooth, so the shield can be hidden out of sight completely.

Finally, on control options, I popped an old Xbox wired controller into one of the Shield's two USB ports and it was recognised straight away, no muss, no fuss. 

I like the ad-free interface. Setting everything up was very straightforward. Kodi and Emby are in the app store, and I got these and my other apps set up withy minimal fuss. 

One failing is the lack of a Sky Go app on the platform. We have one SKY Q box in the house and I refuse to shell out €20 for a multi-room box that will be used infrequently. We run the Sky Go app on a PS4 when needed. It would have been nice to have the ability to run it on the Shield as well.

The other drawback is the gaming side of things. I'm a (very) casual gamer, so can't really justify investment in a decent PC. I was looking forward to the game streaming capabilities of the Shield. However, it turns out that to make any use of it whatsoever, the free Geforce Now tier is worse than useless. Every time I go to play a game, I get a notice that the servers are full and my wait time is ~25 minutes. I can, of course, upgrade to a paid tier for no wait.

I'll likely end up biting the bullet and taking out a 6 month subscription, but the experience here is poor. I'd really like to see what the gaming side is all about before deciding if it's worth investing in a subscription.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong. But the whole gaming side of this device, on first impressions, involves a lot of pfaffing about needlessly with no real reward at the end. 

However, the gaming side of things was always. secondary bonus for me. The real win was proper audio streaming an a direct replacement for all the apps I use day to day on the FireTv. In that regard, job done.

I think the Shield will be my main media platform for some time. I won't be replacing FireTvs throughout the house as they are perfectly fine in what they do, but for proper playback of media in the cinema, this is the device I've been seeking for about 20 years.